


in the sand

by sunbirds



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, don't let anything else about this scare you off lmao, it's kh1 era riku getting introspective and jerking off to the thought of big beefy man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 15:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18478954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbirds/pseuds/sunbirds
Summary: Sora looks at him like he has three heads when he brings up the people who had visited the islands when they were younger, and Riku never questions whether or not it really was a dream.If it was, then his head really needs to stop doing this to him.





	in the sand

**Author's Note:**

> once again i never learned to edit things and i'm not really sorry for it except that i know it's gotta be full of hard to follow run-on sentences lmfao
> 
> i'm not really confident in giving a voice to riku and i think it shows but hopefully somebody likes it anyway. all i really know now after writing this is that... kh1 riku's kind of a bitch for no reason
> 
> [@twitter](https://twitter.com/promptologist) for when you want to yell at me.

Every day is the same. 

 

The islands are full of the same natives there have always been. The population is aging, or his age, and they’re people Riku sees all the time, knows by name and favorite color or food or which boat their family owns. They get no visitors. No tourists from other worlds he  _ knows  _ must exist. No more mysterious meteor showers that are followed the next day by chatter from neighbor to neighbor about newcomers gathered at the mayor’s house.

 

It’s frustrating in a lot of ways. Sora and Kairi entertain his notions about other worlds and adventure, but how much of that is amicable, almost obligatory, indulgence and how much of it is true belief in what he’s selling them is up in the air.

 

They mean the world to him, this one and all the ones out there, but sometimes when he’s racing up and down the beach with Sora, he pictures a different finish line. Maybe not a finish line at all, really, just something bigger than playing around on an empty island. He has fun of it, but there must be more.

 

Sometimes, when Kairi is fumbling with seashells, searching for ones of the same shape and size, he wants to shake her shoulders, hard, and ask her why she never seems to have much to say about where she came from. Why she’s content to hunt down shells and why Sora is content to row in the same waters, the same back and forth route. He wants to point at the darkened sky and yell, desperately ask them how they could believe that this is all there is when there are surely more stars— _ worlds _ —up there than there are grains of sands on the shores of their favorite island. 

 

That’s not much like him, though, none of it, so he doesn’t do those things. It’s easier to play a part in the same amicable, almost obligatory, indulgence of simplistic island living with them. It’s not so bad. He doesn’t hate it, he just longs for more. It’s a side effect of being cooped in the same place and full of youthful energy. Sometimes, he even feels silly for getting too worked up about it, because what proof does he  _ really _ have of anything other than this? It’s childish and unruly to let his imagination get away from him.

 

And then there is the steadily setting sun of an evening like this one, when it’s just him and Sora out on the island while Kairi helps her grandmother in town, and he remembers something that gets its clutches in his brain the same way thinking about Kairi coming from some far off place does. 

 

It’s easier to hold back from saying anything about it when she’s around. The confusion she’s shown and the looks she’s shared with Sora in the past over Riku’s forwardness, over his insistence that she must remember  _ something, _ has occasionally humbled him into stupefied, embarrassed silence. It’s not a feeling he’s used to, and certainly not one he enjoys. 

 

So even now, he treads lightly.

 

“Hey, Sora,” he leads with, and Sora doesn’t even lift his head up from the trunk of the paopu fruit tree he’s lounging on. 

 

“Huh?”

 

“Do you remember when we were kids, before Kairi came, and…”

 

Now, Sora sits up, looking at him with eyes as big as coconuts. “And we got my dad’s boat caught on that sandbar and thought we were gonna die stranded at sea?”

 

“No- what? You thought we were going to die?”

 

“Well, not from being stranded; it’s not like it was that far. But I thought my dad was going to kill us for taking the boat.”

 

He can’t think of a single time he’s ever seen or heard Sora’s parents give him anything more than a gentle reprimanding. Death, in this case, is exaggerated and laughable. He doesn’t fight back the grin. It’s a good memory. They’d both been dragged home with sunburns that had stung and peeled for ages. It had felt like that, at the very least, but time was of no consequence to children and the details are fuzzy around the edges now. 

 

Some things, though, he’s sure of.

 

“That’s… Not what I was going to say,” he continues, carefully. 

 

Sora shrugs, and lies back again. “Okay, so, what?”

 

“There were these people, not from the islands, and they talked to us. Well, only one of them talked to you, at least. Someone older, a woman?” 

 

“Not from the islands  _ and _ before Kairi?”

 

“Yeah. You don’t remember?”   
  


Sora’s head lolls to the side to stare at him. It looks uncomfortable, about to fall over the rounded edge of its perching spot. His expression looks uncomfortable, too, features screwed up in confusion.

 

He doesn’t remember. 

 

Riku, quietly exasperated, looks away and leans more of his weight against the tree trunk, thankful for the relative smoothness of its bark. Even if it threatened scratches at the bare skin of his arms, it would be nothing in comparison to the discomfort he’s feeling now as Sora sifts through his memories and comes up empty-handed.

 

“Mm, no. Are you sure it wasn’t a dream or something?”

 

“It wasn’t a dream,” he says, and there’s an overwhelming bite to his tone, made all the more vitriolic by the contrast with their peaceful surroundings. Harsh. Harsher than any friendly jabs he’s given over the years, even the ones said after defeat in any of their competitive endeavors. He continues on before Sora has a chance to call him out on it. “I guess there’s too much air in your head for there to be any room for memories.”

 

“Hey!” Sora sits up again, scooting closer to shove at Riku’s shoulder, and then they’re laughing, and everything’s fine again as they watch the sun set. Fine, sort of. He feels that prickle of self-consciousness, unease. He shouldn’t have brought this up at all. He’s glad it’s over. 

 

After a while, Sora speaks up again. 

 

“Well, what was she like? Where’d she go? What did she say?”

 

Riku shrugs, immediately dismissive. “I don’t know. She didn’t stick around long. Nothing important, I guess. It was just kind of weird to see somebody new, so I think about it sometimes.” 

 

He doesn’t have to look to know Sora’s unhappy with the vague answer. All those bared teeth over the accusation of a dream, and now he’s backing down with his tail between his legs.

 

“Okay…” Sora’s not even hiding his disappointment. At least he doesn’t push it. “Then, who else was there?”

 

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I don’t really remember.”

 

* * *

 

He does remember. All too well, even after years have gone by.

 

As a kid, and especially that night when he’d climbed onto the docks from Sora’s father’s boat and rushed home, he thought about it in excess. 

 

The mysterious stranger who had showed up from who knew where and talked to him with sincerity, a belief in all of his childish whims about worlds outside of this one and becoming stronger. He’d spoken kindly, clearly, and he’d been tall and muscular and confident, and he was everything Riku hoped to become. He’d brandished that oversized key like he was a hero straight out of a comic book, and Riku was hooked on the idea that taking it within his own hand and listening to the man’s rhyming words had sealed something of a contract. A prophecy, or anything like it, where he’d get all of the strength and all of the tools he’d ever need to protect his friends and everything else that mattered. Here, on the Destiny Islands, and out there, too, in the much bigger world the stranger had confirmed existed.

 

Best of all, it was their secret. To keep the magic from fading. That’s why he parts from Sora after their time alone without ever giving him a real answer. He kicks his shoes off at the door, eats dinner, washes up, and lazes in bed, thinking about all of the things he couldn’t say. 

 

To a kid, a secret that promised all their dreams would come true was priceless. Worth keeping his mouth shut over, even as Sora set puppy dog eyes upon him, then and now. 

 

He’d felt  _ changed _ by it. He just didn’t know how, or if it was a residual giddiness from ideals he’d projected all on his own. 

 

Worst of all, a secret could get buried beneath other things. In return for keeping the magic from fading, he’d had to let the memory go. Just a little. Enough to recall, like how he muses now, but not enough to fixate in the middle of the day.

 

There are other things on his plate. Friends, family, school. Dreaming about other worlds is reserved for when he’s on the small island with Sora and Kairi who don’t mind if he says weird things from time to time about getting away from here, though even then he tempers himself.

 

It’s not like he has to squash down the thoughts when he’s alone. 

 

He closes his eyes, and tries to bring that moment from his childhood to the front of his mind. 

 

He only sort of remembers the words. He wishes he’d listened closer as a kid. That the crashing waves of the ocean had been quieter against the shore. 

 

That he’d known how much the moment would mean to him. 

 

He’s had a lot of time to reflect on it, though, and by now he’s scribbled down on notebook pages many times over what he’s somewhat certain the words had been. 

 

It’s the last half that he recalls the most vividly, enough that he can’t help but to mumble it to himself.

 

“And you will find me, friend—no ocean will contain you then. No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love.” 

 

It should feel silly to say it out loud, but it doesn’t. Somehow, it brings comfort he never knows he needs until he’s thinking or saying it. 

 

If he concentrates, he can almost imagine he has the key in his hand again. He hadn’t noticed its weight at the time, not with the man holding the other end, but he’s sure it would have been heavy. Such was the burden of metal, and of keeping the things that mattered safe. Mostly, he remembers that the handle had been warm. He thinks, probably, that the warmth had belonged to the hand that held it before him, the stranger himself, but maybe not.

 

And then—as always, Sora’s voice shouting his name from across the beach interrupts what could have been the best part of the moment, of the memory. He’s not sure what would have come next if he hadn’t been called.

 

Back then, when he was young and his imaginings colorful, he’d thought that maybe the man would have shown him just how he’d gotten to their island, and they’d use that same method to leave it. He’d learn everything from the man, from fighting to the names of worlds they’d visit and what they’d find on those worlds. They’d help those who needed help, together, champions with no borders.

 

Instead, he’d gotten an order to keep a secret, and his hair tousled, and then he’d run off to join Sora without ever getting a name from the man, even though he surely knew Riku’s from how Sora had called it.

 

If Riku remembers all that he remembers, then he’d like to believe that the man remembers, too, and if nothing else, then at least his name would stick out somewhere in his mind.

 

He turns onto his side, half of his frown smooshed into his pillow. Why would a grown man who clearly had greater priorities remember the name of a boy from a world he had even called tiny?

 

If he’d been older back then, things would have gone differently. Even if Sora called out to him, Riku would have known what to say to the man to make sure he remembered the boy he met on a tiny world on an even tinier island. 

 

His imagination has taken a turn in recent years. A blur of back-of-the-mind obsession and teenage hormones. He’s not always thinking about new worlds. 

 

If he’d been older, then the hand at the top of his head would have strayed to the back, tangled in the strands of his hair, and something in Riku’s eyes would have said that it was okay, so the man would pull him closer. 

 

If they kissed, then he would get to part with  _ two _ secrets. 

 

And if Sora weren’t there? More than that. 

 

It doesn’t come as a surprise to be thinking like this. It’s not the first time. He’s come to terms with it in all ways.

 

Kairi had lived on the island for so long now that she may as well be a native, but the excitement over her existence here had never quite wound down among boys their age. If he was going to feel that the way even Sora seemed to, with the way those two shared their private moments and places and jokes, then he would have felt it already. 

 

And Sora, there were a lot of problems with thinking about Sora. 

 

Inevitably, one brown head of hair morphed into another, richer in color and different in style. Wide blue eyes became sharper, mature. Scrawny arms couldn’t compare to what they were replaced with in his mind. 

 

Not even a minute in, and Sora wouldn’t be Sora anymore. He’d be the man who’d come to the island that day long ago. 

 

So Riku doesn’t think about Sora.

 

Not as the object of sexual affections, and definitely not as a piece in the memory he liked to recreate. 

 

Much like his mind, his hand wanders. He has plenty of time, and he takes it.

 

In this fantasy, other worlds exist, more than Riku could have ever possibly imagined, and the man has come from one far, far away, just to meet him, drawn by some unseen force, guided by a light. Something. 

 

The situation plays mostly the same as it really had, except that there’s nobody around to keep them from falling into the sand together. The man’s lips are chapped, but so are Riku’s, roughened by a lifetime spent in salty ocean air. They press together tenderly, though, and the rough is broken up by the softness of tongues. 

 

He’s never kissed anybody before. Once, he heard a rumor about himself going around their small school, that he’s a good kisser. He’s not sure who started that, and he’d never cared to find out, but he hopes that there’ll be a grain of truth to it one day. 

 

The stranger will be his first. At least, in his mind. 

 

Here in that same place it’s like they’ve kissed a hundred thousand times before. They drink their fill of it until the man decides he needs his fill of other places. 

 

Riku’s hand moves with the mental image of the man shifting down and pushing up his shirt, bunching the front of it up underneath Riku’s armpits while he kisses a lazy path up his stomach from right above his navel and across his chest. While his mouth latches onto a nipple to suck, the pad of his thumb circles around the other. In the end, both get the same attention from his lips and tongue until Riku can’t stand not having anything of his own to do, or maybe that’s an excuse to fight off the embarrassment that comes with the area’s sensitivity. 

 

In real time, it’s growing impatience that Riku had been senseless to believe he could keep at bay. He pushes the waistband of his shorts and underwear down, moving to lie on his back and lift his hips to get them pushed past the curve of his ass. It’s a one-handed job to get them lower when the fabric is far enough to crowd around his thighs, while the other hand fumbles for lotion in his nightstand. Preparation isn’t enough to break his immersion when he’s played through these scenarios before. 

 

He shifts his train of thoughts. Their clothes are either strewn across the sand or gathered somewhere out of the way on their person. Around ankles or pushed up or down just enough so that they can reach what they want to reach. 

 

The man is still above him, straddling, hips canted down to align with Riku’s while he urges Riku to wrap his fingers around the man’s larger cock. Much. When that’s not enough, the man brings one of his own hands to lay atop Riku’s, curl best as it can around both of their shafts, and only with that thought does Riku move in real life. His hand is slick when it wraps around the base of his cock to squeeze there before it strokes upwards, grip firm and pace slow like he really is being guided along by an invisible hand.

 

It’s a level of discipline he doubts many others his age bother with.

 

The lotion makes his hand cooler than he’d like it to be. If it’s anything like what Riku had felt in holding the key, then the man’s temperature must run hot. His palm would be broad and warm where it touched Riku. 

 

And both would touch Riku, the other wherever it could while the one stroking their cocks was occupied. They’d get their fingers caught in each other’s hair or trace them over lines of muscle, undeterred when they unthinkingly drag sand along the same paths. 

 

He pictures flashes of skin and the way they might feel brushing up against each other. How it might be to have the stranger lean down and push his hand through the sand underneath Riku’s back to lift his arm around the younger male and pull them into a sitting position, get wrapped up in one another. Carefully pry Riku’s hand away from where it’s curled around his dick so that he gets the opportunity to hug the other around the neck, press their torsos closer while the stranger takes care of them both. 

 

He’s not so disciplined that his hand doesn’t speed up. 

 

It’s up to Riku’s brain to supply a soundtrack, and unfortunate that the memory is from so long ago that he can’t piece together much. 

 

What he  _ can _ piece together is a forced fabrication of the  _ memory _ of the sound of the man’s voice, and an even more forced blend of words he’d said. Phrases that are easy to come up with, but difficult to be honest with himself about.

 

_ So long as you champion the ones you love. _ It echoes in his skull, and the words that bounce back from the walls of it aren’t all there, nor are they in the right order.

 

_ Love you, love you,  _ like a clock chiming at the hour, and Riku says it back, out loud to the darkness of his room, reticent, flustered. 

 

If Riku had a name to put to the face, it would be different, but only by that much. And if the man had ever said  _ his _ name? That much would be different, too. 

 

Feeling it’s neglected and feeling that the man would never neglect any piece of him, Riku presses his thumb to the head of his cock, rubbing there to coax the semblance of patience out of himself before he tips over the edge with how hastened he’s become. ‘Patience’ only serves to make his thumb feel sticky with more than just lotion. Precum beads and drips down, almost glimmers when it catches the moonlight streaming in from his bedroom window. Would the man spread this around, like Riku idly finds himself doing, or would he bring his thumb to his lips to taste? 

 

Riku’s not sure yet. 

 

He’s not sure of a lot of things, which is why he adjusts his hold again to jerk himself off into the hand that he wishes weren’t his own. 

 

The man’s fingers would be gentle if they ventured further along, he mentally assures, but he can’t bring himself to try for himself. He’s afraid he’ll mess it up. 

 

Not just that he’ll mess it up. That putting his own slim fingers there won’t be enough to do the visual of thicker, longer ones any justice. 

 

He’s working on it. Imagines anything else that he can when he tries in the shower, or imagines nothing at all and works only to make himself feel full. More often than not, he comes just as the realization that it’s not full enough hits, in a twist of cruelty and betrayal by his own anatomy. 

 

Better not to think about it. He twists his wrist and wills back the image of crinkling around deep blue eyes during a gentle smile, and lips moving to form the word ‘love’. 

 

He comes in spurts shortly after the picture has burned itself into his brain, riding it out for as long as he can bear to before the flow is a weak dribble and he has to move his cum-splattered hand away from where he twitches in unpleasant sensitivity. 

 

Force of will to rebel against the boneless feeling that creeps up on him is all that has Riku pulling tissues free from their box to wipe himself as clean as he can manage. He tugs his shorts back up over his hips, and then collapses fully against the mattress again. 

 

The afterglow is okay. A calmness sweeps over him with every rise and fall of his chest.

 

And then it shatters, the way it always does after he’s done this. 

 

Sora and Kairi might be used to it by now. The way he talks about other worlds. The way he boasts about one day becoming stronger. They might exchange their looks, or giggle at his overconfidence, and, from time to time, wrinkle their noses at him when they can’t follow his logic or answer his questions, but at the end of the day they’re all on the same page.

 

If they knew that, some nights, he gasps out declarations of love for a stranger he’d known a decade ago for a little over the amount of time it took the average person to brush their teeth in the mornings, he’s not sure what they’d say. If they’d say anything at all. 

 

If they knew that all of his recent mentions of building a boat and gathering supplies weren’t only jokes, and that he just couldn’t fathom any other method of travel to find the worlds he’s looking for, the faint memory of a  _ person _ he’s looking for, there’s no way they would entertain the notion. Maybe, though, if he spins it just right the next time, they’ll agree to help. They’ll sail beyond the horizon that their eyes can’t see past, and somehow, be it magic or the passion he has to find his strength, they’ll break the borders of the ocean. 

 

That’s a calming thought. He’ll bring it up tomorrow. For now, he rolls over and shuts his eyes, because it’s always easier to let his imagination take over for him. 


End file.
